Sunday, June 20, 2010

The Principals of the Pauline Party

The Pauline Party and Its Principals

While both Republicans and Democrats each claim to be a party of PRINCIPLES ( small government, laissez-faire, self-reliance, libertarianism, low taxes, individual responsibility, the "Daddy" viewpoint wanting independence, in the case of Republicans ), ( big government, tax-and-spend, cradle-to-grave welfare state, inequality of achievement is somehow to be remedied --even when due to merit and hard work--the "Mommy" viewpoint, liking the idea of Dependence, in the case of Democrats ), the latter are primarily a party of PRINCIPALS. That is, the Democrats consist of a congeries of interest groups, each of whom has an agenda and often with the only common element being the desire for Democratic POWER so that the agendas can be advanced.

Who are the Principals of the Democratic Party? We can list them in no special order:

1) We have the Teachers Unions. These are not concerned so much with benefits for students but primarily those of teachers. Thus they advance the idea that more money should be thrown at "education", the irony being that the worse job the teaching establishment does in educating our youth, the more money they demand to be thrown at the problem. Their concern is for tenure, eschewal of merit- or results-oriented compensation and stamping out any competition to public education from charter schools, parochial schools, home schooling, or any alternative to unionized venues. It is no accident that American K-12 education is a disgrace while our university system ( for the most part without a unionized professoriate ) is globally first-class.

2) The overall union movement is in lockstep with the Democrats. The union leaders are not even as much interested in the benefits to their members as they are to the power vested in themselves. More than anything, they abhor competition ( they are, after all, exempt from anti-Trust laws ). They are against open immigration because they anticipate competition from workers willing to work for less. They like higher and higher minimum wage standards so that competition from entry level workers is lessened and made uncompetitive. They are against free trade because they wish to avoid competition from foreign workers. When it becomes apparent that businesses have to move off-shore to be globally competitive they instruct their Democratic minions to find ways to punish this. Because unionism is not the unalloyed benefit to workers they claim, they have constrained the Democrats to push for elimination of the secret ballot in unionization elections. This is incredibly unfair, undemocratic and biased against interests of individual workers but it is sponsored under the oxymoronic doctrine of "Fairness".

3) Various aggrieved groups count on the Democrats to push their individual agendas. Thus, long after laws and society have removed many inequalities, we have legislation forcing "affirmative" action policies which create new inequalities but ones based on the group identifications. The argument that they "don't discriminate against" anyone, but only are "in favor of" some put-upon group ignores the obvious arithmetic fact that one always has only 100% to allocate.

4) Those who endorse abortion on demand and for any reason, call themselves pro-"Choice" but abhor anyone who exercises choice in a direction different from their orthodoxy. Sarah Palin is especially a target because she lives HER choices even though she has not foisted them on anyone else as governor of her state. She is, nevertheless, an affront to that orthodoxy and accused not only of being “pro-Life” but, illogically, “anti-Choice”.

5) For reasons that escape my understanding, those belonging to (4) also generally adhere to the idea that hunting is evil and capital punishment bad. PETA people even extend this to any kind of killing of animals so we have the somewhat peculiar idea that all killing of animals and murderers is evil but killing of fetuses, and infants past delivery, is okay.

Somehow this has gotten conflated with "environmentalism" despite the fact ( that should be obvious ) that hunters and fishermen are more concerned with the environment than are urban dwellers who opine on the matter from cities and without ever having seen such a place as ANWR. (Sarah Palin is the only nominee who has.) Under the rubric of E-ism we have actual nonsense such as a ban on clear-cutting creating forest fires, banning hunting of predators making certain species less numerous, and latching on to one dubious project after another.
a) Over-population is a recurring theme of the environuts, appearing every generation or so. The Population Bomb was a sales success but an intellectual bomb. Likewise, the dire predictions of the Club of Rome about impending catastrophe were filed by history with the prior prophecies of Malthus.
b) Silent Spring led to the banning of DDT but 2Million people a year die unnecessarily of malaria because of this. There is a tendency to deal in absolutes rather than conduct a rational risk/reward discussion about all the effects of policy positions.
c) In 1974, pollution standards were adduced to automobile fuel so that pollutants were reduced per gallon. Unfortunately, the mileage per gallon went down even more so that the standards were counterproductive in terms of miles traveled.
c) Nuclear energy was made anathema by The China Syndrome because it appeared near the time of the (real) problem of Chernobyl and the (non-lethal) incident at Three Mile Island. Actually, more people have been killed and injured by solar/hydro through dams bursting and being built than any other energy source. In the U.S. no-one (since the Los Alamos days) has been killed by nuclear energy.
d) One of my favorites, living on Lake Michigan as I do, was the war some 20 years ago against "thermal pollution" of Lake Michigan from the outlets of the Zion power plant. LM is one of the coldest bodies of water you are likely to find anywhere and the prospect was for the average temperature going up perhaps 0.25 degrees F. In any event, it was discovered that fish loved to propagate in the warm effluent of the power plant and the cause was quietly shelved without the guffaws it deserved and is no longer mentioned.
e) More recently, even The Economist actually accused Sarah Palin of "hating polar bears" although their population has doubled in recent years and they are in no danger whatsoever ( Al Gore's distortions notwithstanding ).

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